Far from segregating young people and dividing Ontario society, extending public funding to all faith-based schools would be a unifying move, say proponents.

Note - Note the Orwellian reasoning here. By taking children out of the public system and separating them by faith into publicly funded faith based schools is somehow a "unifying move". This does not make sense.

An alliance of five religious communities yesterday acknowledged the key requirements for obtaining funding would be that schools used accredited teachers and the Ontario curriculum while subjecting all of its students to province-wide testing.

...

However "if (schools) are left on their own, that will encourage uncontrolled conditions and we will not know what's being taught," Hindu spokesperson Pandit Roopnauth Sharma told a Toronto news conference yesterday.

Note - He could, of course, send his kids to a public school and advise other Hindus to do the same so as to ensure that their children are getting a proper education but that is not what this Hindu leader is lobbying for. He wants a separate Hindu school system supported by tax dollars like the Catholic school system.

The lobby group – called Public Education Fairness Network – includes advocates for Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Armenian communities.

I noticed that these communities are largely "late comer" immigrant groups, meaning immigrant groups that arrived in Canada after the land was cleared, the field was plowed, the seeds sown, and the crops harvested and are now here to partake of the plenty. This plea for "fairness" is just the latest dish they desire at the buffet table that Canada has become.

Canada's public school system is where Canadians are exposed to other faiths and cultures. It is an arena where opportunities for inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue can arise and thus opportunities for greater understanding between groups. It is multiculturalism in action and now it seems the groups that benefit the most from this are really not interested in it at all. They appear to prefer segregation over integration, cultural insularism over multiculturalism and this is what has become apparent to me. Ethnic and religious community groups in Canada do not care to integrate into Canadian society. The only integration they desire is economic integration which will grant them the "good life" (the house, car, vacations, clothes, etc.) and this is why they came here. It is not that Canada is an interesting place to them or that Canadian identity, culture, and history mean anything to them. Canada, to them, is a lifestyle where they can make their materialist fantasies come true. They champion multiculturalism becomes it means they do not have to integrate into Canadian society and that Canadians are obligated to tolerate and accommodate their ethnic identify. In an Orwellian sense multiculturalism is about segregation, not integration. That is why this push by these religious minority groups is not surprising. This is why I have become opposed to the introduction of large groups of disparate people en masse into Canadian society. It is because they don’t care to integrate and as more and more of them replace Canadians in their cities, towns, and elsewhere then the Canada that we once knew, identified with, and cherished is erased by an introduced one.

It is estimated that it will cost $500 million to fund these separate faith based schools. That’s $500 million out of an already cash strapped public system yet these religious groups don’t seem to care. All they care about is money for them selves. It is not surprising that a conservative party that at one time tried to “create a crisis” in the public education system is promoting this. They want to undermine the public sector to introduce private for profit business as a saviour and now they have ethnic minorities on their side. Talk about a coup.

The sensible and cost effective solution to fair funding for schools is to rescind funding for the Catholic school system but since the Catholics form a voting block as well do not expect that to happen anytime soon. It is so much easier to pander to the ethnic vote with public money and their hands are always outstretched to take the bribe. Just ask Mike Colle.

Tuesday, 28 August 2007

LONDON–If time heals all wounds, a decade of pondering the tragic death of Diana has brought at least one startling insight into the extraordinary outpouring of grief that gripped Britain in the days following her demise.

It never happened.

Not, at least, in the way we were shown during that first week of September 1997, when it seemed the whole of the United Kingdom was united as never before in tearful, cataclysmic mourning.

Yes, a mountain of bouquets was placed at the gates of Buckingham Palace, inspiring the phrase: "Diana's floral revolution."

Yes, a cluster of shrines to the late princess sprang spontaneously in the windows of high-street Britain.

And yes, even the Queen herself abandoned royal tradition, reluctantly acquiescing to the clamour to show she cared.

But 10 years on, British researchers who have looked long and hard beneath the veil of tears for Diana conclude the country's famed stiff upper lip never actually crumpled.

A distraught, flower-bearing minority did hold court for the cameras throughout that frenzied week.

But seldom did those cameras pan right or left to show the vast majority of Britons who sensed something "cringe-worthy" in the spectacle of sorrow and chose instead to quietly get on with their lives.

The disconnect between what was shown and what really was happening is the subject of a trove of research by a handful of British academics, including Cardiff University Professor James Thomas, who debunks the myth of collective mourning with some interesting viewing statistics.

Four million Britons were watching when BBC One aired an evening tribute to Diana Spencer, Thomas reveals in his book Diana's Mourning: A People's History. More than three times as many, a massive 14 million, chose instead to watch that night's instalment of Coronation Street.

...

"It wasn't the whole nation. It just looked like it. But half of Britain, perhaps cringing a bit, was completely uninvolved. They just kept quiet because they didn't want to be seen to be going against something that seemed like a popular awakening of some kind."

I find this article interesting because the media projection of Canadian attitudes concerning mass immigration and multiculturalism is handled in a similar fashion. It focuses on ethnic cultural events and gives then a place of primacy within the Canadian cultural identity that it leads one to believe that turbans, saris, burkas, reggae, etc. are as Canadian as hockey and maple syrup. It also focuses on the opinions of Canadians who appreciate these ethnic cultural events and are advocates of multiculturalism. But all the media has to do is pan left or right of the event and witness the mass of Canadians who do not care for these things let alone identify with them as being Canadian. It would also witness the “cringing” many Canadians try to suppress when they witness firsthand the ethnic and cultural transformation of their country and suddenly realize they are strangers in their own land.

There is a collusion of support from Canadian media for mass (third world) immigration and multiculturalism compelling Canadians into believing that they support mass (third world) immigration and multiculturalism as well. In Ontario alone there is The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, TVO (TV Ontario), CityTV (local Toronto Station owned by CHUM), OMNI 1 and OMNI 2, and the CBC. Rarely can one find dissenting opinion of immigration and multiculturalism in these media outlets. Since Canadians are inundated with support for mass immigration and multiculturalism it appears that to be opposed to it renders one in the minority of opinion. Therefore those “nay sayers” keep their opinions to themselves, much like the British during Diana’s death, thus further enforcing the illusion of national and wide spread support even though that is not the case.

I am convinced that most Canadians do not approve of their nation’s immigration policy and are opposed to multiculturalism as well. Canadians are not interested in becoming minorities in their own country because nobody does. Canadians do not support immigration because they think Canada is “too white.” The few places where dissension is allowed are on radio call in shows and it is interesting to hear how many Canadians call in to voice their opposition to the ethnic and cultural transformation of their country. Mass support for Herouxville, Quebec, and media criticism I might add, is an example. Mass opposition to allowing turbans as part of the RCMP uniform is another. When Canadians overcome their reserve and dare to confront the inevitable accusations of racism (an intimidation technique employed to silence opposition) they start to realize that they are not alone in their dissent and are in fact more numerous than previously imagined. Canadians need to speak out. It is one of the reasons I have this blog.

Monday, 20 August 2007

A bulletin from Immigration Watch Canada says it better than I ever can. Here are some highlights:

(1) First of all, Laibar Singh came to Canada on a forged passport in 2003. Some real refugees have to resort to this tactic, but it has been determined that Mr. Singh is not a real refugee. Furthermore, Mr. Singh has demonstrated that he is not trustworthy. He has violated a deportation order before. To be blunt, like many other fraudulent refugee claimants, he almost certainly intended to be the proverbial "foot in the door". He had three children under twenty-one years old in India and undoubtedly intended to bring them here. And, as in almost all previous cases, Mr. Singh's children would, not long after their arrival, have tried to sponsor as many relatives as they could.

...

(4) The expenses do not end there. According to The Vancouver Sun, "The CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency) has booked Fox Flight, a medical services company, to fly Singh to India with medical personnel. The flight, which follows the original deportation arrangements, is expected to cost $68,700, IRB spokeswoman Melissa Anderson said. Anderson said the CBSA is also on the hook for a large bill for the original deportation flight, which was cancelled after Singh went into sanctuary." So, his total medical-related expenses come close to $600,000. Add legal costs and the real total is probably close to $750,000.

...

Similarly, the legal framework that surrounds Canada's immigration and refugee system cannot be a giant job creation project for Canada's immigration lawyers, consultants and advocates. Yet their bullying, intimidation and litigation of the federal government has resulted in the creation of a huge set of regulations, all of which are designed to drag out the refugee and immigration process for their benefit. The result has been that Canada's immigration industry has created virtual sinecures for themselves. This is virtual life-long employment at Canadian tax-payers' expense.

The immigration and refugee mess has to be cleaned up once and for all.

Our refugee system at work folks and some people know how to milk it. Incidentally it was six Guyanese Sikhs back in 1985 that made it possible for Laibar and others to defraud our refugee system and abuse Canadian hospitality. Because of a poorly chosen word in the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms the Singh decision came to be which essentially allows any person on Canadian soil all the rights and privileges as a Canadian citizen does except the right to vote. These rights also include tax payer medical care which the newcomer has not paid a dime into. It's a mess folks and it needs to be cleaned up. As Laibar, middle class Mexicans, Israelis, and Tamils have illustrated our refugee system has become another avenue for economic migrants to gain entry into Canada via lies, half truths, and deception. In practice it has little with protecting the truly persecuted.

Residents run for cover as gunfight erupts to disrupt barbecue near home where Jordan Manners lived.

The absent father and the mother with children by different men is often cited as a characteristic of members of gang culture. It is also a cultural norm of Jamaica. So is gun violence. When you allow the importation of a people whose home country indulges in such behaviour, what do you expect from them when they come to Canada?

Immigration to Canada is not a human right. Canadian immigration policy is not an exercise in charity. It is supposed to benefit the country and its people save in the case of asylum seekers who genuinely need protection from persecution and not the refugee frauds that have gamed our system (I’m looking at you Tamils, Mexicans, Israelis, Somalis). Canada’s immigration policy does not benefit the vast majority of Canadians but it does benefit the immigrant (and his or her soon to be imported relatives), ethnic communities, and those whose livelihood is dependant on the importation of people.

Our immigration system has failed this country in the importation of people from socially dysfunctional and culturally incompatible societies. Jamaica is one such country. Canada is under no obligation to allow Jamaicans, or anyone else for that matter, to immigrate here. In instances where social misbehaviour is apparent then Canada should stop brining those people in. The problem is not illegal guns imported from the U.S. The problem is that we Canadians allowed the importation of a culture whose people are willing to use them.

Friday, 17 August 2007

From a Michal Coren article in the August 11, 2007 edition of Toronto Sun.

Okay, they didn't exactly word it in that way and they may have shot themselves in the foot, but their story last week was extraordinarily revealing. They revealed that advertisements in two Canadian Punjabi newspapers were promoting ultrasound clinics in the United States where, "You are told the sex (of the baby) immediately."

The implication of this, the story continued, was that "female fetuses" would be aborted. The article then quoted a community activist who said that this was "really, really sad."

One of the great achievements of the feminist movement was the securing of a woman's right to kill her unborn children, the rights of the father and the rights of the unborn child be damned. Ironically enough it is females that are primarily being aborted. I guess the feminists didn't see that one coming but when you are a middle class careerist woman the gender of your unwanted child is irrelevant. An inconvenience is an inconvenience.

Males are preferable to females in South Asian culture and they brought this preference with them here to Canada. This is evident in the fact that there is a high rate of female abortions among South Asians, mostly Sikhs, in Canada. There is also a corresponding high rate of aborted female fetuses in India as well bringing that country ever closer to a demographic crisis since males will eventually outnumber females in great numbers.

This is sexist, discriminatory, and it is incompatible with Canadian values (it is also hypocritical since Sikhs were whining only a while back about discrimination in Canada’s immigration system concerning the name Singh). Women have rights here. But such gender discrimination, to say noting of caste discrimination, is part of South Asian culture. So to what extent do we tolerate it if Canada wishes to remain "committed to multiculturalism"? My answer is we don't because we don't have to. This is Canada. This is not India. Canada has a set of cultural values and Canadians have every right to expect immigrants to this nation to abide by them. If they don’t want to then they shouldn’t come here let alone be here.

Canadian culture and values are in the process of being replaced as more and more immigrants come to Canada in greater numbers and from so many different and dissimilar countries. Canadians are finding themselves under constant pressure to respect and tolerate these self-introduced cultures with no respect and tolerance returned. This is why Canada needs to reform its system. Canadian immigration should favour immigrants whose cultural values are similar if not exact to our own.

Going back to the abortion issue, Canadian women abort around 100,000+ future citizens a year. Maybe the government should address this number before turning to immigration to solve Canada's ageing demographic "problem".

Manuel Lanveros could have come to Canada through normal immigration channels as a skilled immigrant.

Instead, the Mexican citizen simply hopped on a plane and asked for refugee asylum here because, he says, he couldn't afford to risk his life on the two-year wait.

An architect with 15 years of experience, Lanveros represents a new wave of Mexican refugees who contradict the desperate day-labourer stereotype: educated, upper-middle-class professionals who claim corrupt authorities are failing to protect them from drug cartels, abusive spouses or gay bashers.

Note - Canada's refugee system at one time only applied to those escaping political persecution. It has since been expanded to include sexual orientation and victims of spousal abuse, going further than what the U.N. considers a refugee. This exposes Canada to further abuse of our refugee system with bogus claims and in fact it has been found that many are trying to make a refugee claim based on sexual orientation and spousal abuse. Once these people are granted refugee status the chain migration starts and they start to import their families. It's a scam but no one in Ottawa seems to care.

According to the Immigration and Refugee Board, Mexican asylum claims have skyrocketed in a decade, from fewer than 1,000 a year to 5,000. For the past two years, Mexico has been Canada's top source country for refugee claims.

...

"My concern is we're going to be swarmed by Mexicans in the U.S. who don't have status there and can come to the border because they don't need a visa to come to Canada," says Rico-Martinez, himself a refugee from El Salvador. "We're starting to get calls from Mexicans in the States, five to six a week, hoping to file refugee (claims) in Canada. But we may not even know half of the Mexicans here who are without status, because they don't need visas to come."

Anticipating a continued influx, the refugee board is now treating Mexican cases as a top priority. Some cases are heard within six months, compared with the more typical 12 to 18 months.

...

Advocates argue that most Canadians view Mexico through the benign lens of a tourist – as a free, democratic country – and fail to recognize how corruption there can leave people vulnerable to crime. That blind spot, they say, is reflected in the high rates of rejection for Mexican refugee claims. "Our concern is whether Mexicans can get a fair hearing, when most people simply assume they are economic migrants," says Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees. "And we've seen our share of prejudice against the Mexicans."

Note - Mexico is still a relatively safe country to live. It is much safer than most South American nations. Mexico City even has its own Gay Pride celebrations laying to waste any claim of persecution based on sexual orientation.

The FCJ Refugee Centre's Rico-Martinez thinks it's only a matter of time before Canada imposes visa requirements on Mexicans, as it did on Zimbabweans and Argentines when it felt a need to curb the inflow of refugees.

The sooner Canada slaps Mexicans with visa requirements the better. And while Canada is at it, Canada should do the same for many other countries as well. The article notes, "Like Americans, Mexicans don’t need visas to visit. As such, they’re exempt from Canada’s bilateral Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States, which stipulates that asylum seekers must file refugee claims in the first country they enter." Mexican refugees have a 28% acceptance rate and that is too high. We shouldn't even be entertaining Mexican refugee claims. But we do entertain refugee claims from Americans and Portuguese so why not Mexicans?

Yes, Mexico is corrupt; it has a drug cartel problem. It does have spousal abusers and gay bashers but so does Canada. Canada has every legal right to send back every Mexican refugee claim because internal flight is open to them. Mexico City is large enough to get lost in. It has a large gay community there. If the character of Mexican society is enough to make a refugee claim then, by way of legal precedence, Canada cannot stop the claims of hundreds of millions of other people who live in countries that are in worse shape.

Canada should not even accept one person from Mexico as a refugee because they are not real refugees but are in fact economic migrants. As the Toronto Star article illustrates Mexican refugees are increasingly of the middle class but such is the case with almost all refugees to Canada. It is the mobile upper and middle classes of the developing world that are making refugee claims. The poor, those who most need Canada's help, cannot afford it.

A year ago, as the war in Lebanon raged half a world away, Canada launched perhaps the most ambitious rescue operation in its history.

It was extraordinary, really. With no military assets in the region, Canada managed to evacuate some 15,000 of its citizens. Most were taken in repeated voyages by ferry to Cyprus or Turkey, from where they were offered passage to Canada.

Note - Of all the countries with registered foreign nationals in Lebanon, Canada reported the largest number at some 50,000 citizens. This is remarkable considering the fact that Canada has no historic relation with Lebanon. France, a country that does have a history with Lebanon, had even fewer citizens in Lebanon at the time than Canada. Canadians were surprised to learn about this but it should be no surprise to anyone casually familiar with Canada's immigration and refugee system.

For this, no questions were asked and no fees were charged. All that was necessary was a Canadian passport. In some cases, Canada evacuated other nationals, too.

...

This success story was largely ignored at home. Instead, we heard complaints about Ottawa's tardiness in responding to the crisis, or whining about the voyage -- bad food, filthy toilets, choppy seas.

Their protests were almost as remarkable as the rescue itself, which cost some $96 million. To many, their government had let them down. It should have reacted more quickly and forcefully. After all, wasn't the safety of Canadian citizens its foremost responsibility?

In a sense, yes. But when we learned that some 7,000 of those who had fled Lebanon returned six weeks later, it reinforced questions about dual citizenship that had been raised during the evacuation: What are the obligations of a government in an emergency like this?

After all, if half of these Canadians went back to Lebanon, it was legitimate to ask who they were and what their citizenship meant. The Conservatives promised to review dual citizenship.

...

The reality is that many of those Lebanese-Canadians rescued from the Middle East have no little or no association with Canada. Some have never lived in Canada, never paid taxes here, never worked here. They got passports as young children or by marriage and threw them into drawers, to be retrieved in a crisis.

The same may well be true of the estimated 250,000 Canadians in Hong Kong, or expatriates in other places. These are Canadians of convenience.

Andrew Cohen seems to be one of the few journalists out there who are more prone to criticize Canada's immigration and refugee system and expose the abuses therein as opposed to being one of its cheerleaders which seem to be not in short supply in Canada’s main stream media particularly the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and the CBC.

I agree with Andrew Cohen. Canada needs to review its dual citizenship laws. I do not know to what extent changes need to be made but it is becoming apparent that many immigrants to this country like it because it minimizes their responsibilities to this nation while maximizing the benefits they draw from it.

Canada is not a passport. It is not a harbour in a rough sea. It is not a lifestyle. We Canadians demand commitment to this country from its immigrants. In return they share in the benefits of living in this society. It is called mutual respect. What is becoming apparent is that to many immigrants to this country Canadian citizenship is nothing but a membership card to an exclusive club. They are not Canadians mind you but they are club members and immigrants are okay with that. The only time the tell you that they are Canadian is when they want something out of it and demand that it is their right because they are “Canadian”.

The behaviour of the Lebanese is not exclusive to that community. Similar behaviour is found in many of the foreign national colonies that have sprouted up in Canada over the last 30 years. We cannot blame them for acting that way though. It is our fault for letting them act that way. So long as Canada’s immigration laws are relaxed, our citizenship requirements eased, and commitments to this country are trivialized we can expect this kind of disloyalty to continue.

It’s amazing really; how immigrants today are more prone to take this country for granted than those of us who were born here. It wasn’t always like that though. Earlier waves of immigrants become more Canadian than Canadians because they wanted to be Canadians. Today they are Canadian because, well, it’s convenient. If that’s what it means to be a Canadian to these people then they shouldn’t be here and we shouldn’t let them in let alone stay.

Wednesday, 8 August 2007

It sounds like the work of a tourism promotion board in British Columbia: "Snow-capped mountains, fertile valleys, lush green forests and one of the world's most spectacular coastlines."

But the encouragement to come to the province is not meant for backpackers or vacationing families. It is from the website of Health Match BC, a group that seeks to lure a seemingly odd but highly prized demographic – doctors from foreign countries.

Health Match BC did not respond to requests to comment for this article. But they are only one of many groups promoting the benefits of Canadian life to foreign doctors. Indeed, faced with shortages of resources and manpower, provincial health-care systems across the country have long looked overseas to fill vacancies.

These doctors historically came mainly from the U.K., the United States, or other wealthy countries whose own health-care systems, despite flaws, provided world-class care to their citizens.

Now things are different. Today in Canada 10 per cent of the doctors come from South Africa, a country where almost a third of public health posts are vacant and the effects of AIDS, high infant mortality rates, and other scourges devastate lives with appalling regularity.

A report issued earlier this year by the international medical relief organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières makes clear just how high the cost of foreign recruitment – or what critics call poaching – has been.

The report details the long lines, lack of drugs, and lack of personnel that are hindering the organization's work in southern Africa. "There are simply not enough nurses, doctors, and medical assistants," a nurse in Malawi says. MSF warns that its inability to expand access to HIV/AIDS treatment threatens to lead to more unnecessary illness and death.

...

Moreover, as one doctor in Canada pointed out to the CBC earlier this year, doctors have just as much right as anyone else to globalization's promise of free movement of capital and labour. "It's a freedom of choice. Whoever wants to come, I think he should be able to come," said Dr. Syed Peer, a doctor in Newfoundland who was born in India.

...

For its part, the Canadian Medical Association advocates that Canada become self-sufficient in physician supply. "Wealthy Canadians cannot and must not rely on the systematic recruitment of doctors from countries that cannot legitimately afford it," said Dr. Peter Barrett, a former CMA president, in 2005.

This reveals yet another absurdity of our immigration system. On the one hand we believe in helping the developing world yet on the other hand we bribe away from the developing world its most precious resource: the human resource. Even the World Health Organization (WHO) chastised the West, naming Canada, for depriving the developing world of its health care professionals.

The most compassionate thing Canada could do is to train its own physicians and stop the importation of doctors from the third world. We can't change the "it's all about me" attitude so eloquently made, and so appropriately made by, that upper-Caste Indian doctor living in Newfoundland. Most people go into the medical profession because of the money. That's why Canadian doctors go to the United States and South African and Indian doctors come to Canada. Less are health professionals because they "want to help people."

If the brain drain is bad for Canada, then why does Canada encourage a third world brain drain to its shores? Or is this type of hypocrisy expected and allowed for a leftist, liberal, and overly permissive Canadian society?

The Rwandan government has dropped the death penalty for convicted war criminals, removing a major hurdle to the deportation of genocide suspects hiding out in countries like Canada.

The decision could unblock the deportation of Leon Mugesera, a Rwandan who remains in Canada more than two years after the Supreme Court ordered him out for a 1992 speech inciting the massacre of Tutsis.

Canada would not deport Mugesera or other war crime suspects to Rwanda as long as they faced the likelihood of execution or any other cruel and unusual punishment.

...

Hutu extremist fled to Canada in 1993

Mugesera and his Quebec City lawyer, Guy Bertrand, declined an interview request on Monday. Bertrand's secretary passed along a message, saying "as long as the case is still pending, there won't be any interviews. We're still waiting."

Mugesera and his lawyer have maintained in the past that Mugesera and his family face persecution and death in Rwanda.

...

Marina Wilson, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said Canada does "not deport to countries that have the death penalty, where the individual might face execution."

But Wilson pointed out a person can face other forms of persecution in his home country that could delay deportation.

The fact that Canada does not deport anyone who may face the death penalty or "other forms of persecution" is a beacon calling all international thugs, criminals, and con men alike to our shores. Once they are here we cannot get rid of them. The only exception is if these people pose a threat to Canadian security. This is known as the Suresh exception. Other than that these people become Canada's problem.

It is yet one more irony of a leftist, liberal, and overly permissive society. We believe in a "just society" yet give refuge to those fleeing justice. A significant number of refugees to Canada are not real refugees. They are economic migrants, the mobile middle to upper classes of the third world mostly, who abuse Canada's refugee system to gain entry to Canada. Others are criminals who knowingly committed crimes in their home countries and have come to Canada to escape justice. Others groups of people Canada shows "compassion" too are the relatives of Somali warlords and their families; those same warlords who continue the political instability in Somalia and bring death and misery to millions of Somalis. Others include LTTE thugs and Baabar Khalsa terrorists.

The claim that persecution and possible death awaits them if deported is cited by almost all refugee claimants because they know Canada cannot deport them. It is hard to prove that they will be persecuted but then again it is hard to prove that they will not and since Canada's refugee laws places the burden of proof on Canada the refugee con is usually a sure bet. It's worked for Tamils.